Does your mom like anal?
I’m sure there is a veteran out there that doesn’t mind this question, but the overwhelming majority of us never like to answer.
If You Actually Killed Someone
Seeing someone die stays with you. I might not remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, but I’ll never forget watching the pink mist appear behind a dude’s head after I told my men to shoot. You may think that the only reason someone suffers mentally from combat is because of what they saw, or a matter of the things they experienced, but for many guys what bothers them most is what THEY DID.
Finding out what you are capable of can be scary. Snuff out a few lives, smoke a cigarette, eat some chow, and then sleep with a smile on your face. The knowledge that you can take a life so easily, and be happy about it, celebrate it even, can be difficult for some men to deal with. It isn’t until you stand over the lifeless body of your friend where the only consolation is that you killed as many of those fuckers as possible, that you realize just how thin the line is between hero and monster. To stand up and cheer when the A-10, Apache, or AC-130, do a gun run and and watch those giant rounds rip right through the enemy positions sending body parts flying and painting the terrain red is unsettling to many.
Yeah. That’s what you are bringing up.
Every soldier has a beast inside, a ferocious murderous beast. His capacity for violence is the only thing that kept us alive. Admitting that we took a life, and we relished in making the grass grow can make many people uncomfortable and we know that. We know that our honest answer is going to appall you, and our relationship will never be the same.
If you never killed anyone
If, on the other hand, you never killed anyone, well now there is a qualifier set to your service. The question, by it’s very asking, implies that doling death is the only way to be soldierly. It’s as if the sacrifices you made, the time away from family, the stress of serving, and even the deployments you went on were for naught because you didn’t take a life. You weren’t a “real” soldier because you didn’t have to make that fateful choice.
A medic that rushed into a burning vehicle to save his fellow soldiers may have never taken a life, but he knows the pain of working frantically to save his friend to hear, “I’m going to die Doc.”
What a slap in the face to that dude.
Just don’t ask
Just don’t, ok. If someone wants to talk to you about it, they will, but you’re going to have to earn a certain level of trust that doesn’t come from a shallow relationship. I have friends that are closer than family and we don’t talk about it, for the same reason we don’t talk about what kind of sexual fantasies our wives have: that shit is not my business, and I don’t want to go there.
-LJF
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What they (those asking such an asinine question) is that a lot of times you can’t unsee the stuff you see in war. All they are doing is dredging up stuff that will keep you up at night, not them. I say get a little payback…crank call those stupid f***s at 3:30 in the damn morning and ask ‘em how the Hell they’re sleeping!
While I mostly agree with your post, whether or not if anyone has killed doesn’t qualify their service. I know plenty of people in every service that never did.
Exactly my point. When someone asks the question, it’s as if they’re saying the only way to have “served” is to have killed. That’s what I mean by placing a “qualifier” on their service. It’s a bullshit way to minimize everything else that veteran did, and just another reason why that question should never be asked.